Beats Acquires Topspin, Could Change Face of Streaming Music

by Zac Shaw

News is breaking about music streaming service Beats Music‘s acquisition of Topspin, a marketing, sales, contact and content management system built for professional musicians.

We here at Songhack are excited about this combination. Beats shows promise as a streaming music site that facilitates a deeper music experience than its competitors. The integration of Topspin will quickly position Beats as the most musician-friendly platform on the market.

Topspin has already been integrated with Beats to allow artists to update their profile page with their own images and merchandise offers.

“As the era of streaming matures, new ways to connect artists and fans will evolve inside these services, and Beats Music now has a proven platform and team in Topspin’s ArtistLink to lead the industry in empowering artists in their service.”

It basically sounds like Beats wants to be the social network upon which fans can connect directly with artists. And they want to monetize the relationship. That’s pretty huge.

The marriage of Beats and Topsin, if you read between the lines, is about building a direct fan interaction platform on top of their global streaming jukebox. Beats will add value to streaming music for musicians, by allowing them to interact with fans and monetize that interaction.

Beats CEO Ian Rogers is tuned in to the future of music, and Topspin was the company he left his CEO position at to helm Beats. We share in his excitement of being on the verge of a vision he and many musicians have held close to their hearts for a long time. Only time will tell if Beats is able to pull of a new level of artist transparency and empowerment, or if compromises lead to a dead end. We’re certainly rooting for the musicians!